Leading People In My Business

Leading People, Even Talented Ones, Can Be Difficult Work

People are not easy to lead.  They love to lead themselves.  Most people I have hired find their own way around the business model and do what they think is the right things to do.  It is very common to employ people who just want to learn what they need to do and be done with it.  They only want to learn what will be necessary for them to do in order to remain employed.  Very few will come aboard your business model and want to do more of the things that will help your business model 'fine-tune' its existence.  Employees come to work each day with the expectation that you will provide for them a safe place to work, one that will compensate them for a fair day of work and one that does not put them on the spot or expect them to go the extra mile without added compensation.  For the most part, they do not want to come to work to be put on the spot.  Employees hate that place.

The art in learning how to get your employees to work on improving their 'at work' skills is a very slippery slope.  They do not feel it is their responsibility to learn how to 'fine tune' how they were shown to do their job when they were hired.  They came to work expecting to be told what their role was and how they are suppose to perform that role.  That's it.  Anything higher in expectation that comes later down the employment trail will be considered additional duties.  The employee feels like they are now being asked to do more than what they were hired to do.  In most cases, they accept this process fairly well.  They will tolerate learning knew stuff about what they are employed to do up to a point.  Every employee has a point in which they will tolerate learning new stuff to do.  Once that point is reached, they begin to find ways to slough off doing more.  Each employee has a different level that becomes that point.  Some go further down the learning trail than others.  Some come aboard your business model with very little desire to learn more about the 'fine-tuning' of their job responsibilities.  It takes all kinds of people to make up the personality of your employment staff.  You are the leader of this group.

People in a group are not easy to lead.  They have time and separate motives that they use to develop certain group pockets of interesting behavior.  Group dynamics can become a very slippery slope to manage.  Most leaders struggle with the art of managing groups well.  Most leaders tolerate certain group activities that harm some of the growth and progress their business model experiences.  They tolerate some 'not so good' stuff because they do not possess the skills to lead people through rocky waters.  Group dynamics can be very stealth in their approach to perform what they feel is the right way to do their job.  The employees will take possession of how they want to work well before they take possession of how the consumer expects them to perform.  Employees are employees, not owners.  There is a difference.

When your model has the opportunity to hire a previous owner of a past business, you will discover a different type of employee to manage.  That type of employee has a different level of work understanding.  They are employees that tend to take more initiative.  They take more possession of the work responsibilities that serve the customers larger desires.  They tend to take better grasp of difficult situations better than the employees who have never owned a business.  This can become a very challenging balancing act for the leader.  Having other leaders employed on board with those employees who do not lead well can become an interesting process to balance.  It becomes a lot like raising a large family of working kids.  Some dominate, some follow, some complain, some ignore and yet some will learn how to work harder on looking like they are working when in fact, they are not.  It can become real 'fun' to manage.

Leading people can become a very difficult task for some business owners.

Let's See, How Does Money Work?

We Get Trapped By How We Protect What We Know About Money.

I wonder how many people drive automobiles in the world yet have no idea how the internal combustion machine actually does what it does.  Tons of people purchase additional 'drive train' warranties on their new vehicles and likely have no idea what components are connected together to make up the 'drive train.'  Give the vehicle owners a blank piece of paper and ask them to draw a sketch of the engine and drive train system inside the workings of their vehicle.  With the sketch have them label each individual piece of the moving system that provides the power of motion that runs their automobile.  You would be surprised what percentage of owners could not successfully complete this task well.

Most vehicle owners do not know how their vehicle runs.  Most do not care to know.  Only the gear heads care about stuff like that.  Automobile owners just care that their key works and the vehicle gets the job done.  They know where the handles, brakes and pedals are, the knobs, the seat belt, and what kind of fuel to put in their rig.  They know how to manage the gadgets that come with the car.  They know most of the rules of the road and generally follow them most of the time.  Millions of drivers travel the roads every single day and millions of drivers succeed in getting where they want to go.  It is not imperative that the vehicle owner actually know how the engine does what it does.  Most get to where they are going without knowing those details.

Did you know this would be the same kind of comparison we would find with business owners trying to describe how money works?  Go ahead.  Take out a piece of paper and start describing how money works.  I will wait.  Did you know that most business owners do not specifically know how money actually works?  Again, there are tens of thousands of business owners who do what they do every single day without needing to know specifically how money works in their business model.  Most get their business to go where it goes without knowing those details.  Running a business is no different than running a vehicle.  Once you drive the two of them long enough, you get a pretty good idea on how to drive them to where they will usually go.  Business owners do not necessarily need to be able to write an essay on how money works in order to operate a business model.  Most business owners could not pass that test anyhow.  I couldn't.

Then one day I met a very successful businessman.  We did not hit it off very well.  I was too arrogant to receive his friendship.  I acted like I knew more about business than he did.  As we spent more time together, I became more irritated about how he treated me.  He nicknamed me "hot rod."

We crossed paths during a period of time when the two of us where working together on a joint project.  He was also one of my customers at that time.  I was thereby forced to put up with his unwanted leadership.  I had a vested interest in allowing his influence to occur.  I wanted his business to come more my way.  He fully understood my position and took complete advantage of the opportunity to share some leadership with me.  It was a lot like being forced to attend a business class because the instructor had something on you that would hurt if he let it out.  It was like being blackmailed.  I placed myself into a blackmailed position.  I remember coming home one night and my wife asked me how my day with that businessman went?  I walked by her with a very short quip, "He's a jerk."  I think behind my back she smiled and quietly said to herself, "Good, it's about time.  He has met his match."

Then one day it happened.  He asked me to describe how money works.  He started it out like this, "Hey hot rod, since you are so successful in business why don't you help me out and tell me how money works?"  He paused until I spoke.  It was silent for a very long time.  I started to gather my best thoughts together and began to describe to him what I knew about money.  I was all over the board on the subject.  I had a lot of truths rolling down the isle of conversation which included some 'not-so-true' descriptions coming right beside them.  I had the microphone, I gave the show.  My stage, my audience.  He sat quietly and listened.  It was not a debate.  It was a one way road.  I felt good about it all day long.  I finally got him to shut up and to quit bugging me about business talk.  When I got home that night my wife asked me, "How's your business guy today?"  I replied, "I finally beat him at his wits today.  He shut up for the rest of the day."

Several weeks later he had an opportunity to ask me the question again.  He asked that same question exactly how he asked it the first time, "Hey hot rod, since you are so successful in business why don't you help me out and tell me how money works, only this time, get it right?"  I thought last time was quiet.  Boy, this time I found out how quiet the air can really become.  This time mother nature quit making her background noises.  It was dead silent for a long while.  Then I broke the silence and said, "I have a better idea, why don't you tell me?"  He quickly replied and said, "I thought you would never ask."

Find Your Business Traditions

Michael Jackson Had His Signature, So Does Your Business

Every business model has a signature.  No matter how much a leader of a business wants to guide the model in the direction planned, some things the model does become expected events that consumers look forward to seeing.  Those expected patterns become part of the signature of that business model.  If you own or manage a business model, what are the events or patterns of your operation that have become part of the things your model does that your customers have grown to expect?  Do you know what those things or events are?

K Mart became known for its Blue Light Special.  Google does some interesting signatures with their company name on the cover page.  Les Schwab Tires in the Pacific Northwest does an annual "Free Beef" promotion.  Coca Cola promotes pageants and talent contests.  Pepsi uses celebrities in the entertainment business to promote its causes.  What does your business model do that your customers come to expect?  Does it do an annual barbecue?  Does it sponsor an annual golf tournament?  Does it promote a children's fun run?  Does it produce an annual pumpkin contest?  Does it have a Christmas open house?  Does it host an evening fashion show with all of its spring introductions?  What are the things your business model does that have become part of the signature your customers come to expect?

If you do not have a signature that consumers recognize, why not?  Ikea does not include Victorian furniture in its product line-up.  It does not match their European fashion trends.  Their consumer base does not expect them to deliver that kind of styling.  Their particular style, their particular 'look' has become part of their success as it defines their signature fashion.  Ikea has a following that they created in the fashion and style they maintain.  It is part of their signature.  What does your model look like?  How does your business model carve its way into the routine patterns of your customer support?  What do your customers look forward to seeing when they arrive at your business model?  What traditions have become part of who your business has become?  If you do not have any of these things happening, why not?  How do you expect your customers to become part of your business model and take a little possession of who your model has become?

Macy's in San Francisco used to do a magnificent 'tie day' for the men's department.  It was a whole floor dedicated to men's ties.  They would display them everywhere.  The interesting displays of ties would be creative and unique.  Some were placed on stuffed animals, automobile tires, model trains, baseball equipment and anything coordinated with the patterns and colors of the ties.  I do not gather my guy friends up and rally them together to go shopping at a major department store annual sales event.  It is not part of what us guys do. The male gender does not call their buddies up on the phone and schedule a day to head into a city and go shopping together at a special sales event in a downtown department store.  It is not a routine habit for the guys to do.  However, we did do exactly that for the big tie sale at Macy's, downtown San Francisco.  A few of us rallied together and headed in to see the event.  Joe Montana would be there, good food, good entertainment was scheduled and tons of chicks would be checking out the great looking ties for their guys.  We were single, had professional jobs and wore nice suits.  The tie event was just the ticket for up and coming young professionals like us.  A trip to the City was a great idea.  We lived in Sacramento.  When we arrived to the big tie event, we could not believe the packed store!  Unbelievable.  Shoulder to shoulder foot traffic.  The sign said this was the 45th Annual Tie Sale.  What signature does your business model support?

If you have not developed one, maybe it is time to carve one out.  Let's examine how to do it.  First of all, it will take time to become a great event.  Start slow and build gradually.  Find something unique about what your business model offers.  Make sure it is something the customers will support.  It might be a particular style of items you sell.  It might be the category of interest your model supplies, like hunting or fishing.  You may be an insurance agent in your model.  You can introduce safety programs for kids going to school for the very first time.  You can bring in the media, the teachers and the parents to help them prepare the community for the returning kids on the streets of the areas where the schools begin classes after the break from summer.  You can define a special focus on the kids that will be attending school for the very first time.  One family can win a free pizza per month with a drawing you hold during a special safety event you host at the end of summer.  You can head up a community fund raising drive to collect school supplies for the less fortunate.  Your agency can introduce a small scholarship fund given to a qualifying graduate, identified during their Junior year of school activity.  As a Senior in high school, they already know they have been awarded your small college scholarship.  Your agency is linked to education in the community through this huge annual event.  You no longer need to place your face on an expensive community billboard to sell your wares.  What is your business model signature?  Find one to support and begin to go to work on developing it into something that becomes very big and recognizable.

Success Is Not About What Is, It Is About What Isn't.

His Daughter Helps Him Run The Mechanic Shop

I was talking to a mechanic yesterday.  He has operated his own auto mechanic shop for almost 35 years.  He has a few nice toys he has acquired in his life.  One of them is a very nice 40 foot boat, a river cruiser for pleasure.  He also owns some old classic Harley's.  One is reportedly worth over $50,000.  He said he noticed years ago that his business began to do a lot better when he did not offend the people who came into his shop for mechanical help.  He said he noticed that most mechanics had a tendency to talk 'over' the customer about the auto problems they brought in.  He said he used to do the same thing to the customers coming in for the first time.  They would come in with the problem they were having with their vehicle and he would try to show them how smart he was about being able to fix what was wrong.  In the process to gain the customers trust about who was the 'right' mechanic to select, he found himself talking 'over' them instead of 'with' them.  He said early on in his business career he recognized what kind of mechanic he needed to learn how not to be.  He said a good deal of his success can be linked to what he isn't instead of what he is.  It made a lot of sense.

He also said the next step he had to overcome was to avoid becoming labelled as a mechanic shop that kept your vehicle longer than the customer felt it should be out of service.  He knew he could not become known as a procrastinator and keep the customers vehicles longer than the customer felt it should take.  He said his mechanic shop was not known for taking in vehicles and keeping them for a long time.  He wasn't known for being a procrastinator.

Before we left that conversation, he described how this current mess with our economy reminds him a lot of what it was like in the early 80's.  He remembers how busy he became during the recession of the 80's because nobody could afford to buy as many new vehicles so they began increasing the repairs they needed to do on the current vehicles they owned.  Older vehicles needed to keep running instead of becoming trade-ins for newer purchases.  His business boomed during that recession.  Sometimes success is not what is, but instead, adapting to what isn't.  He said he noticed how this was a true statement in his business model.  As a result, he said he spends a lot of time trying to figure out what isn't happening in his marketplace so he can make sure it is.  He said he thinks a lot of his success comes from this line of thinking.  He said he thinks about the stuff that is not happening more than the things that are.  What isn't became bigger to him than the things that were.  His success is not about what is, it was more about what isn't.  He said nobody brings a vehicle to him that is.  They all bring vehicles to me that are not.  He said his business was a success because he fully understood what isn't.

Think about it for a very long time, people.  Go deeper into this line of thought.  It reveals a deeper understanding for how business can and does succeed.

He is dead spot on.  His mechanic shop gained its best growth when the customers could not get their vehicles to move correctly, and even more so when they could not afford to replace them.  If the customers vehicles do not move correctly, consistently, and with ease, they are not doing what the customers need them to be doing.  If the vehicle is moving well, he has no business.  If the vehicle isn't, his business has more chances to grow.  Isn't, feeds his business growth.  He became more in-tune to the thinking of what isn't.

Fifteen years ago I came across a great motivational tape.  It was a training cassette.  It began its introduction with a quick but powerful opening line.  The speaker on the cassette described how he paid more attention in his finance career to the corollaries of life than he did to those things that matched up well.  Corollaries are the opposite consequences that occur, not the cause nor the effects of what did happen.  The consequences of what 'did not happen' became how he looked at his financial advisory work.  He would spend more time working on the things that did not happen as opposed to the things that did.  He used the cassette to motivate people to become more 'in-tune' to the depths of how the business of their personal finances did not work well.  He focused on the corollary.  On that motivational tape, he claimed his success came from that particular view.  Looking at the corollary was the key to his success.  I noticed the mechanic was describing the same thing.

When Will We See A Turn Around In The Economy?

It Does Not Matter Where They Come From.

I recently had some surgery.  It was not terribly serious but I had a good friend a few years ago that was a very good surgeon.  He once told me that no surgery should be taken lightly.  With the uniqueness of the human body, anything can happen that might cause something strange to occur.  As a result, I have learned how to take any surgery with a certain amount of concern.

I also jump to surgery when it is necessary.  I am not afraid of getting something repaired or cut out that does not need to be there.  Most people I know will worry a great deal about going under the knife for some kind of necessary repair work.  Not me, let's get going so I can get back to work.  That is more like how I treat the need for some surgery.  Let's go, let's get it over with and get repaired as fast as we can get it done.  My body repairs very fast, too.  I do not have time to lay around and recover from surgery work.  However, if the Doc says I need to stay in bed for three days, I stay in bed for three days.  I am not happy about it but I want the repair to work correctly so I do not inadvertently turn three days into a cheated repair and end up spending four more days catching up on the repairs I cheated.  Three days laying down is not good, but it beats seven days.  I like to follow the rules when it comes to body repair.  The body is a serious piece of important machinery.  Let's get it running well.  We need it to hum in good shape.

I have not spent much time in my life seeing doctors.  I have been blessed in that way.  I have had cancer removed two times and some minor surgery on another ailment that cropped up.  Otherwise, my body has run well and rarely sees a day of sickness.  I am approaching sixty years old and at last check, which was recently, everything shows that it is operating better than it should.  My business mentor told me that this is the time in our life that we need to increase paying attention to how well we preserve the health of our bodies.  We are coming down the backside of our productive world and will want to see more time spent on the fruits of our life efforts.  Good health will help us perform that next step on our life trail.  He advises that we work closer with eating properly, exercising properly and getting enough rest to restore our body and energy.  It is not a bad idea.  My wife and I date more often now than we did in the peak productive part of our life cycle.  I like the idea that our health can properly support the things we like to do.  We work hard on our diets, our rest and our personal walking activities.  Good health is not an accident.

Did you know the same holds true for our economy?  I do not rely upon my government to manage my body and the process my body uses to remain in good shape and to manage good health.  I take care of that part.  I do not become dependent upon someone else to run that part of my life.  I do not turn my body over to a government to expect it to manage what I eat, how I exercise and how much I give to the value of rest.  The management of my health is my responsibility to find success, not the governments duty.  In my business world, I operate my business model the same way that I operate my body and its respect for good health.  I do not expect the government to produce my success.  My business models will succeed regardless of how badly the government manages its business affairs.  If the government decides to destroy the health of its body, that is its choice, not mine.  If the government decides to ruin the process of its business affairs, that is its choice, not mine.  I do not need to follow suit.  I work my health and my business affairs to do the things that help my environment find ways to win.  I do not wait for them to get it together.  The economy is way off course, I know that.  However, I make sure my business models do not do the same thing.

I need to manage success, not failure.  I know I must endure the failing process of our economy, but it has nothing to do with how I must manage success.  I have a responsibility to manage success in my life of health.  I have that same responsibility to manage success in the life of my business world.  I do not shift that responsibility to a failing government model.  I meet many business owners who get terribly wrapped up with decisions of failure when they rely upon the government to supply their success components.  I think they suffer more failure as a result of it.  I refuse to play ball that way.  My business models do not deserve that kind of treatment.  They deserve to be successful.  That is why I work to help them succeed.  Success can come to life in this economy...and does.  If you are one of those who is asking the question, when will we see a turn around in the economy...ask Target how they over sold a monster new line of products in just two days?  The Target Company found embarrassment recently for over-selling the manufacturer's full product production of a new 'coordinated' line of products.  They must contact every single customer who ordered the product that will not be able to receive it because they did not have enough of it to deliver.  Ask Target when will the economy turn around.  They have a different view of that question.

Success is what you learn how to make of it.  Target did not rely on the government to figure out how to end this ugly economic slide we are experiencing.  They work on producing success despite of it all.  So should you and your business model.  There are countless people producing successful results in their business models.  Make sure you are one of them.  Quit waiting for the government to get its act together.  It is not doing the right stuff at the right time in the right speed at the right respect.  Give up waiting for them to get it together and go back to work on succeeding anyway.  Target's recent over-sold crash proves that enough can be done to make success happen.  I like Target's problem better than the one others are suffering through.  I try to make the same problem Target found.  How about you and your business model?

If You Use Technology, Make Sure It Works Well

With Technology, It Can Become An Ugly Habit

I rarely stay up late.  I go to sleep early each evening.  My body needs to shut down and get some needed rest, every day.  Since I do not stay up late I miss the evening talk shows that have a bit of comedy added to them.  I like comedy.  Comedy runs rampant in the world.  Human beings offer a lot of good material to comedians by making sure we continue to do stupid things in our lives.  David Letterman used to do the routine in his program that was called "Stupid Dog Tricks."  I do not stay up late often enough to catch his current program and material.  So I do not know if he still does that skit.  Whatever the case, I use his "Stupid Dog Trick" phrase often in my business dealings with technology.  Technology is an easy target for that phrase.

I have gone to many websites to do business in my life.  I use the technology they design to help those business models do what they do.  When I stumble onto a website that does some really dumb things to customers on their site, I call those events "Stupid Dog Tricks."  I might select an item to order and follow the instructions on how to order that item.  The website might ask for some additional information before it can close out the sale.  Sometimes the site will want to know more things about me than I prefer to offer.  The information they want to know has nothing to do with what I was buying.  I leave that site and go find my purchase somewhere else.  When that happens, I call that step a "Stupid Dog Trick."  How stupid can a retailer become?  You would be surprised how many I find.

The abuse of technology and its obvious power to help collect data is well over dressed.  Too many business models forget how simple selling can become.  They try to go beyond the selling machine they designed and sometimes begin to introduce a process that tries to do more than what they should provide.  They build invisible "Stupid Dog Tricks."  The art of technology is over-used and becomes a detriment to the volume they could be enjoying.  Their business models fail in the art of selling.  Consequently, they limit the volume they could be enjoying.  Unfortunately, they do not dovetail the right clicking devices into their tracking systems to count how many buying customers left their site for the stupid stuff their technology offered.  They refuse to arrange how to use technology to look into a mirror.  The villain is in the fort.

If you use technology to do your business, make sure it works well.  Do not get carried away with stupid stuff.  I refuse to shop at a K Mart store because I get tired of telling the sales clerk at the register what my zip code is.  Somehow, that just wicks me off.  I go somewhere else.  I avoid using those kinds of buying procedures.  It smacks of trying to gather more revenue, too obviously.  Consumers can become easily  offended if they sense you are digging into their personal patterns too deeply.  They can become more offended when they sense your digging is solely performed to increase their sales.  Sometimes business owners get too excited about what they can do with technology and forget to add consumer respect to the selling game.  If this process gets out of hand, which it can happen very easily, it will limit the sales the business model could otherwise enjoy.  Be careful how you use technology to do your business work.

Technology is a tool, make sure you do not add too much of it to avoid the potential for wonderful growth.  I rented a Harley Davidson motorcycle recently and the work I had to do online to secure the bike, arrange the time slot, provide the insurance proof, the licensing proof of endorsement and the potential miles I might travel was beyond what should have been required for me to transact that sale.  I was certainly the full time clerk, too.  I also found the website challenging to use.  It did not have the specific location of the rental shop placed on the website of the business.  It required that I call the 800 number to get directions to the rental shop.  Once I completed the clerical processing, I was not as excited about where I was renting my bike.  In fact, to secure my required insurance policy for the day, I was instructed to go to another website with my reservation number from the bike rental site.  Since the rental site could not completely secure my bike rental until I completed the insurance portion of my clerical responsibilities, it gave me a temporary reservation number to use on the insurance site.  Once the insurance site gave me their confirmation number for securing the insurance, I was required to go back to the bike rental site to fill out one more form to receive my final confirmation number that registered my bike to me for that date.  Truly some "Stupid Dog Tricks."  I will not use them again.  I rent bikes a lot when I travel around.  It was a cumbersome, over-worked, foolish process of the use of technology.  It did not work well.  It also timed out while I was reading the agreement stuff.  I am a pretty fair reader.  It likely assumed that nobody reads that stuff anyway.  The use of technology was arranged incorrectly in this case.  I will not even describe the stupid procedures for payment processing.  It required three personal phone calls to correct the error the payment process created.

"Stupid Dog Tricks" can kill your business model, and does so quietly.  The owner of that bike rental shop has no clue that he is using technology incorrectly to manage his business model.  When I finally met him I was turned off by his 'self-hidden' arrogance.  It was obvious that telling him about the online experience would serve no purpose at all.  A person convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.  This is a likely pattern.  He owned four motorcycles, it was a holiday weekend and two were still remaining in his possession that day.  I would consider that a clue.  Something is not working well in my model if that kind of opportunity is not being fully productive on one of the higher use days for potential.  Business owners, get serious about watching your business models "blink" like this.  The bikes were spotless, great models with amazing tune-ups.  They were fine machines that ran very well.  It was obvious he knew his bikes and loved them well.  They were taken care of immaculately.  It is too bad he carried himself so closed minded.  I would have loved to help him out by giving him some technology advice.  He was way too closed-minded to open that door.

Learn How To Properly Shut It Off, Go Home.

Twenty Four Seven On The Success Of Life

In this world of multi-tasking requirements to remain competitive we tend to load up on duties that cannot be properly completed in a single day.  Our lists are longer than the time allotted to complete them.  Not only that, some of the things on our list to complete are projects.  Projects are the kind of work that cannot be finished in a single swoop of activities.  Projects can take a series of connected activities linked together for several days in order to find the finish line.  If you own a business or if you manage one you know all to well how each day seems too short to complete what you wanted to get done.  There is no lack for work duties to exist.

If your daily schedule is not jammed full and you find yourself looking for something extra to do in your business model you might be one of those models who needs more business to occur.  If that is the case, consider adding some tasks that fall within the marketing category of responsibilities.  You can begin to add tasks that will help your model increase foot traffic and customer purchasing.  Begin by looking at your market region and study who has the kind of desire to trade with what you have to offer.  If you discover a large gap in that study, change what you have to offer to match what the market region would support.  This type of work can be some very difficult work.  The trick to succeed in this kind of work is to make it effective and honest.  If you find your business tasks need more things to do, this is exactly where you can begin.  Start building improved customer flows.  Make a list of the things you will need to do to make that happen, successfully.  Go online, to trade publications, to marketing books and find the sources that will help you develop a better way to attract more consumers.  If you have nothing to do you have time to read.  Get more ideas on how to improve traffic flows.  Start adding to your daily routine of work some of the tasks you find that will improve traffic flows.  Begin doing more work on your attraction policies.  Do you have any written attraction policies?  If not, why not?

Each day you arrive to work should be filled with a long list of the things you could not finish yesterday.  Get back to them immediately and begin chipping away at the projects you started.  Learn how to be a completer.  Learn how to arrive to work each day with the same focus and attention you gave on the projects you started.  Learn how to begin the new day right where you left off yesterday.  Make the days run seamlessly.  Stay on point.  Learn how to properly finish what you started instead of quitting what you lost interest in doing.  Stay the course until that course runs its path to a properly fit ending.  Quit practicing the dysfunctional approach to management.  Get organized, stay organized and complete what you started.  Write it down if you find you forget how to do this important step.  Success is not the by-product of a dysfunctional mind.  In order to gain one, you must get rid of the other.  They do not run side by side, together in the same race.  It is one or the other.  Face up to this truth and change the way you approach your task management.

My father was a self taught businessman.  He was a school drop out.  He was also a man of his own skin.  He did not enjoy having someone else tell him what to do.  He was also far from lazy.  He could 'out-work' just about anybody.  His work levels at any one of his jobs was filled with the extra mile of activities.  If someone told him to go sweep the property and grounds he would do it quickly, with a high level of attention  to detail and would also repair the broken garbage cans on the premises while doing it.  None of his work activities would be recognized as average.  He was always serious when he did his work.  He would be a great employee for any place of business.  Unfortunately, he was a bull.  Bulls tend to want control.  They are great workers and do a lot of great things, but they will challenge a leader who floats along the leadership trail.  Place a bull underneath the wings of a weak leader and that weal leader will get run over in time.  The bull will charge at all times and will run right over anyone standing still in his path.  That is exactly how my father went to work each day.  You would never catch him sitting in his chair trying to figure out what to do. "Doing" is the only way you would ever find him.

As a result, he came to realize early on in his working career that he would best be served by owning his own business.  That way he would have nobody standing in his way to do what he does best, "doing."  He could become the owner of his desire to do a lot each day.  He could determine on his own what needed to be done each day.  He could find more work to do that needed to be done.  He could control how his doing could produce more success.  He could fill his day with more than the day could absorb.  He could become successful doing what he found was worthwhile in doing.  When he finally wore himself out and passed away, he owned his business for 42 years.  It was solvent and making money.

Let's Take Inventory

Analyze How You Book What You Own

How did the word "inventory" grow up to become such an ugly concept?  Mention that word to a business owner and watch how unfriendly that word becomes.  Nobody likes to take inventory.  It is tedious work.  It requires a hard dash of boring procedures that can take a very long time to complete properly.  If the inventory is a mess in the business system of tracking, it can become more grueling than tedious to examine.  If the inventory is a mess in the business system, it can reveal unwanted discoveries.  If a business owner has a hole in the business system, taking an inventory will expose it.  Taking inventory has become one of the business responsibilities most owners do not like to perform.  It is too tedious, too difficult to do properly, too revealing and most of the time, it projects a greater loss than once was expected.

The word "inventory" has grown up to become an ugly concept.  Most business owners refer to the procedure of taking inventory as a negative duty.  They usually refer to it in a negative light.  Taking inventory brings on a different set of unwanted business activities.  Taking inventory is one of the required business procedures that is performed in order to find holes, errors and areas needing adjustment.  Taking inventory means we count our stuff to see how well we really are doing.  All of our business numbers are set in place with the final exception of knowing for sure what we own.  Inventory is the final step to determine if what we say we own is really in our possession.  Most business models reflect higher ownership than what the true inventory reveals.  Shrinkage is not a process most business owners enjoy.  The shrinkage we discover comes from the inventory steps we perform.  Most owners do not relish the idea to examine the stuff they own in their house to see if what they say they own is really there.  Most owners hate to discover that they do not own as much as they thought they owned.  Owners hate to lose.  Inventory will reveal what they lost.

Let's take inventory.

We just did.  We examined how we feel about taking inventory.  We do not like it.  We do not like exposing our loses to the bookkeeping system.  We prefer the numbers that reflected more profits.  We do not prefer the numbers that were adjusted down due to the loses we discovered in our inventory.  If our profit numbers were bad going into inventory, they likely will come out worse after it is completed.  We hate that kind of revealing exposure.  It smacks wrongly upon the management process of our business leadership.  When we discover our inventory is out of line between what was booked and what was physically counted, it says a lot about who is in charge.  The persons in charge of that part of the business model have some serious explaining to do.  When ownership changes from having one set of book values turn into a lower set of physical values someone needs to be held accountable for the drop in difference.  Inventory is one of the best methods that reveals holes in the business model.

Let's take inventory.

I need to find my holes as early as I can, before the year comes to a close.  Why, pray tell, would I wait a whole year to find out where my business holes are?  Do I enjoy taking huge loses once per year?  No, of course not.  If that is the case, why do I wait a whole year to perform the 'year-end' inventory procedures?  I do not get it?  Do we only do inventory once per year because it is a routine and customary accounting practice?  What gives here?

Let's take inventory.

I know it is a lot of work.  I know it takes a lot of time.  I know it requires everyone to become more tedious than usual.  I know we need to stop certain business processing during the time we perform an inventory.  I know all of these things are required.  So, let's take inventory anyway.  I want to find out where my holes are developing.  Every business model has holes it develops, every single year.  If those holes produce unwanted loses, let's find them earlier.  If we find them in the fifth month of the year, just think about how much ownership we saved by not waiting until the twelfth month of the year.  Why give seven months of some of our ownership away for free?  Better yet, why lie to ourselves about what we own when the booking system we are using is not working well?

Let's take inventory.  It will reveal where we are doing it incorrectly.  How can we fix what we are unwilling to see?  Let's go see what we do not know.  Let's take inventory.  We might discover some things we do not see.  We cannot fix those things until we discover what they are.  Why wait a whole year to do that step?  Do we not care more about our success than that?  Maybe we care too much about our false sense of success?  Which one is it?

Remind Me Again, How Do I Manage Pressure?

Pressure Is Part Of The Leadership Picture

The competitive market has become very fierce with survival techniques.  There are not enough great business models challenging their competition with good clean work.  Leaders are stretching outside of the integrity pool to perform the things they believe they need to do to win.  Too many business owners will compromise their values and step across the integrity line to get a victory.  When enough business owners begin to operate in this fashion, the lines get blurred and more business owners begin this ugly chase to victory.  Compromise, deceit, deception and lying become part of the process business owners use to help them find their path to victory.  Wow, what a great way to increase pressure!  It will guarantee more pressure to arrive.

Owners somehow believe in fairy tales which they quietly convince themselves will not hurt the outcomes of their business results.  So they cheat.  They cheat to win.  The fairy tales convince them that they can win by cheating and escape the consequences.  They walk across the value lines and begin to perform the things that increase the pressure they feel from the business models they manage.  Eventually, the owners are convinced that this is the only way success will appear.  They look around at the competition and believe in the fairy tales that the victories landing on the porch of the competition are producing healthy results.  Looks can be very deceiving.  The real truth remains, your competition is suffering right along beside you.  Quit teasing yourself.

Pressure is everywhere because integrity is missing.  If Albert Einstein was to write on a chalk board the perfect equation for pressure he would coin this phrase, "Increased Cheating + Increased Lying x Denial = Increased Pressure."

Pressure will increase.  Sometimes the owner is tougher than expected so the pressure will arrive much later, but it will come and it will increase once it arrives.  This effect is not a fairy tale.  It is real.  It is certain.  It is an absolute.  If your business model is cheating, lying, deceiving, denying, manipulating, equivocating, prevaricating, compromising its values or practicing deception to find its victories; your model will bring home to you some very nice packages of increased pressure.  They might not be on your front porch just yet, but they are coming.  Get ready to open them and be prepared to deal with them when they arrive.  You will not escape their delivery.  The wrath of your works is certain to arrive.  The guilty ones usually do not read this far.  They have already jumped ship on this subject.  Too bad for them.  There are ways to correct this mess and re-direct their business models into something that produces better levels of magical success.

Success is a magical result.  It comes to those who earn it.  It comes to those who deliver the right stuff at the right time with the right approach.  It comes in magical ways, too.  It shows up in the "B" bank, not the "A" bank.  We tend to design our business work to aim at receiving our victories in the "A" bank.  We learn how to do the right stuff.  We learn how to pay the right price.  We learn how to endure the tough stuff.  Then we hope to produce and receive the "A" results.  We work hard on our business models to do the right things in the right ways trying to deliver this type of work as often as we can endure and afford.  In doing so, we expect to receive our just rewards.  We believe we have earned those just rewards.  When those rewards are delayed well past when they should have arrived, we get discouraged.  Once discouraged enough, we begin to alter how we do our work.  We move and modify where the lines of integrity once stood.  We justify cheating.

Let me define cheating.  We feel increased pressure from the poor performance our business model has experienced during the past two years of operations.  The pressure to manage in such a negative economic environment has caused us to lose some of the spirit we used to have in the better times.  The lost spirit has eroded our sense of balance and we feel more discouraged about what we need to do next.  As a result, we get overwhelmed with the pressure we must deal with and begin to cheat.  We justify going home, away from our work, more earlier each day.  Instead of working a full daily schedule like we used to do, we cut out early once in awhile to relieve the pressure we are feeling.  We cheat and leave the pressure in the business to be managed by the employees we hired to handle them.  We work harder to escape how that pressure makes us feel.  We dislike it enough to make us cheat so we escape that responsibility and pass it on to someone less deserving.  We escape by giving it away.  The picture is wrong because we still expect an "A" bank result.  Leaders, it does not work that way.  Quit doing that silly move.  It is a lie.  It is a fairy tale.  Success will not come to your business in this fashion.  You need to buck up and learn how to continue to manage your business model right smack dab in the fire.  Do not develop the habit of cutting out early because the pressure is getting to high.  You are the leader, that is exactly what good leaders do well.  They walk right into the fire to find out what they can do to put it out.  Quit cheating yourself by escaping your leadership duties.  Your business results are aware of this truth.  The results know the truth.  Lie all you want about this one, the truth still remains the same.

We Dislike Changes In Our Business Models

A Winter Evening Fire On The Stone Deck!

When the weather changes from season to season, we drag our feet to accept it.  When fall begins to arrive we notice the cooler nights and how soon the dark begins to happen earlier.  At first we are not quite ready for the change in the seasons.  We just got used to the warm weather and the bulk of summer time activities.  It took us a while to get into the swing of summer but once we got it going, we do not want it to go away.  Now it seems as though we need to get ready for another change in the season.  Each change in season means we have some things we need to get done before the season gets into full swing.  We need to close out the summer stuff and get the winter stuff ready.  That means the season of fall is the only time we can do this kind of stuff to beat the winter weather.

My wife and I have a fairly strong landscaped yard.  It is almost an acre of woodland type landscaping with paths, lights, sprinkler systems, shrubs, trees, lawn sections, waterfalls, a stream bed, ponds, decks, fire pit areas, flowers, fountains, a barbecue section, umbrellas, yard hardscapes with art pieces, tools, equipment, a very busy shed area, fencing and a vegetable garden.  For those who know what I am describing, fall is the season to get busy and wrap up some very important projects and winter maintenance preparations.  Fall is the time when we need to shift gears and button everything down for the coming winter months.  The days are shorter to make this happen.  It gets dark sooner.  The window of time gets squeezed to make this winter wrap up a more serious project of time demand.  Summer fun, summer beauty and summer activities are soon coming to an end.

Our yard design is arranged so that we do not need to experience sadness by saying goodbye to our outdoor activities.  We have installed two fire pits near some stone decks that will be the fall feature of our outdoor activities.  Our landscaping is woodland designed so that it can still be enjoyed in the dead of winter.  Some of the plants we used in the design have the ability to produce new fall and winter colors.  Our outdoor enjoyment can continue throughout the year.  In fact, I am headed to town today to re-fill the propane tank on the barbecue.  We will barbecue right through the cold season.

Mother nature is the purest form of evaluations.  When she is done with spring, she moves to summer.  When she is done with summer, she moves to fall.  When she is done with fall, in comes winter.  She makes no doubt about how she describes what is, is.  If you are not ready for the changes she delivers, so be it.  She delivers them anyhow.  It is not her problem you delayed your work.  She warns you she is coming, she comes when she wants to and she delivers what she decides to deliver.  Accept it and move on.  She does not ask for your permission to do what she wants to do.  Sometimes she can be a little bit extreme, too.  Tough beans, it is her gig..not yours.

We accept mother natures evaluations.  We accept them because there is simply nothing we can do about them.  We either get adjusted with them or suffer the consequences she will deliver if we are not prepared.  Most of the time, she warns us and gives us plenty of time to make fair adjustments to what is coming.  We play with our own preparation schedules in our own way.  She does not care if we get ready for her changes or not.  She will do her seasonal changes regardless whether we prepare properly or not.  She handles her truth of seasonal changes just exactly how she performs it every single year.  Her consistency helps us to accept this truth.  We may not like the change we see coming in the new season.  She could not give a hoot.

Business is much the same way.  There are truths about a business that cannot be denied.  We may not necessarily like some of the truths about business but we must make our proper adjustments when those truths of change arrive.  Business truths come with our without our acceptance of them.  Business truths do not need our approval to arrive.  They will come sooner or later.  They are just like the seasons of the changes we see in mother nature.  They will arrive.

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

The last time I attended Disneyland I was impressed with the new hotel and the new adventure park additions.  The last time I went to the Organ Grinder Pizza Parlor I was disappointed that the stage around the large Organ was roped off due to some repairs that needed to be scheduled in order for the organ to be viewed safely by the patrons in the pizza parlor.  The Organ Grinder Pizza Parlor is now out of business...Disneyland still goes on.

Each business model has the potential to create a way to trademark who they are and why customers go to see them.  The reasons for increased popularity and the causes that generate the business growth become the trademarks of the business model that the consumers love to surround.  As time travels on, those trademarks will carve large paths in the avenues that lead consumers to the front door of that business model.  Those trademarks drive the attention that feeds the consumers interest which helps to produce the business success.  Trademarks drive the traffic while all of the other business components secure the success.

Tinkering with a business trademark can be very touchy stuff.  If the trademark that drives the consumers attention is altered too much, the flare of that trademark may no longer be the same attraction the consumer loves.  The consumer may find that they no longer recognize the trademark of that business.  As a result, the consumer may no longer give that business model the same level of attention.  The consumer may reduce the attention it gives to the interest they found in the trademarks produced, once those trademarks are altered too much, the consumer may refrain from visiting that business model as often.  The old cliche' holds true on this subject, do not change what is not broken.  I see many business models make this mistake.

It seems so obvious that it would not be a good idea to change a business trademark that helps to feed the consumer interest.  Unfortunately, many business leaders do exactly that to their business models.  A business model that specializes in operating a great special order program decides it is time to require a 20% down payment on every special order.  They install the new policy and notify all of their existing customers.  Their sales drop significantly so they cut the staff down by a couple of full time equivalents.  With less staffing employed to chase down the natural process of special order follow-ups, many placed orders get lost, delayed or incorrectly completed.  The service drops significantly.  The consumers who once trusted the invisible process of buying something they cannot see or touch now become reticent about allowing this business model to perform that duty.  The once strong special order program now becomes a slowly dying component of the business model.  At some point, it finally disappears.

Business leaders can and do kill great business trademarks.  The once strong trademark of success, special ordering, becomes too challenged to continue under the new themes of management efforts.  Leaders do this silly stuff and work extra hard on justifying support for making deadly changes to their programs.  I have seen it so much that I kind of expect it.  I am a customer who has seen certain outfits make interesting changes in programs I liked that due to those changes, I no longer use that outfit anymore.  I am sure I am not the only customer who has pulled the plug on where I once enjoyed trading my dollars to attend.

In my small town, I had a very favorite coffee shop we liked to attend.  We liked the crowd they attracted and the layout of the sitting area.  We liked the taste of the coffee, the blends they used and all of the servers touch on producing good blended coffees.  The atmosphere was very distinct and produced the kind of feeling we enjoyed.  So many unique qualities of art, arrangement, programs, community support project choices and add on items of unique character were occasionally included as part of the trademark of that owners business model.  We found all of this 'style' very attractive to support.  We were frequenters of that particular coffee shop.  They served our coffee habits well.  The shop was always busy, but we did not mind.  We were attending a place that was happening.  To a lot of consumers like us, that is also an important trademark to enjoy.  We belong.

Sometimes Business Changes Need A Lot Of Patience To Mature

Patience Works Quicker

I was not a great college student.  My senior year was the year I decided it was important to study hard.  That was the year I almost produced straight A's.  However, prior to that year I was more interested in playing baseball and going to parties.  I was one of those kids who could be a serious irritation to the education system.   I linked up with the wrong set of friends and lost the right reasons why I was attending college in the first place. I did not leave a path of wonderful exhibits along my college trail.

There are a couple of educational highlights that stand out, which is amazing.  One of those highlights was some experiential lessons I received in a psych laboratory class.  The class was actually a cool class.  I took this class when I was junior and my academic efforts were beginning to turn around for the good.  I was actually enjoying the path of learning some new things.  I quit worrying about how much others knew about information and lessons that were brand new discoveries to me.  I became more excited about finding new patterns of thinking that were new and interesting.

The lab work we did in that psychology class was an experiment to teach a rat how to press some buttons and receive some pellets of food and a drink of water.  I had a partner in that lab class as we shared a rat in our experiment.  I do not remember my partners name.  I can barely picture this partner in my mind, vaguely.  I do remember how impatient my partner was.  I remember how we used to go to class and work for two hours each day during class to get our rat to do what we wanted it to do.  I remember how stupid our rat was.  Our rat did not seem to have a lot of intelligence.  Our rat could not figure out where the water cup was located.  Our rat did not seem to have a very good nose for finding the food pellets either.  It was a tough lab test.  I actually liked the instructor, the learning material and the lab project.  I made my mind up that our rat was going to beat all of the other rats and learn how to get his own pellet and water feedings by learning how to push the buttons all by himself.  I decided to study how to make that happen.

I would go to the lab after a day of school and work on teaching our rat how to find the levers and make his food and water come into their feeding trays.  My instructor taught me how to use the method called, "successive approximation," to get this training done.  I caught on to the process.  It truly is a patience game.  The trainer with the most patience will be the one who completes the project first.  I learned how quickness comes from slowness.  My lab partner was not very patient.  He would foul up the good work we were doing on the patience game.  We would need to start over with each return back to the lab from day to day.  Our training was moving in an endless circle.  Therefore, I recognized that in order to get this training done right, I would need to do it at night when my impatient partner was not around to screw it up.

The idea behind the experiment was to teach the rats how to feed and water themselves.  There was a lever in the large cage for the rats to push on that would drop a pellet into a small dish for them to eat.  There was another button for the rats to push to release a few drops of water into a little tray.  Our lab job experiment was to try and teach our rats how to feed and water themselves.  The only tools we had to train this rat was a series of cords and buttons to operate the water release and pellet release mechanisms.  We had another cord that managed the buzzer in the cage and one to manage the little light in the cage.  The idea was to use the buzzer and the light to help teach the rat when it made the right moves to approach the food and water trays.  It sounds easy.  It was not.

Successive approximation was the technique we were instructed to use.  The idea behind this technique was to reward the rat for making the right moves.  When the rat was moving about inside the cage it would have its back to the light and levers on the other end.  When the rat turned around to face the direction of the light and levers, we were instructed to press the buzzer and turn on the light.  Each time the rat made a move towards the light and lever area, we were instructed to press the buzzer and light button again to reward the rat movement.  If the rat made good moves that were significant enough, we would press the food and water buttons to release a little reward for the rat to receive.  It was truly a serious patience game.  My partner did not get it.  He was a 'bad' human rat in this experiment.  He was very impatient.  He believed that by giving out a ton of food and water into the trays the rat would catch on and go to them all of the time.  He was correct.  The rat would stare at those trays for hours upon end, waiting for the food and water to come out.  Not once did the rat ever make a move to the side of the cage to push on the levers that would release the drops of water and the pellet of food.  Not once.  We were losing the lab experiment game.  Other students were making better progress.

How Does More Pressure Change Your Leadership?

Be Careful How You Change Your Leadership!

I have been in the fire of leadership for nearly 40 years.  It can get real warm when the fire heats up.  The warmer it gets the more uncomfortable the surroundings.  Leadership is not always a nice place to be.  Leadership can cause pressure to mount and grow.  A persons management style can change with increased responsibilities.  A persons management style can change with increased accountability.  Both of these actions can increase the pressure a leader absorbs when the levels of responsibility or accountability increase.  The leader who absorbs this change is faced with possible modifications applied to the style in which they manage.  More pressure applied will tend to change the way a leader behaves.  The leader will react to increased pressure and be faced by the urge to change the style of his leadership.  Pressure can change the style of leadership, and it does.

I have been faced with many levels of high pressure in my leadership roles.  The last three management positions were roles I was hired to repair near bankrupt business models.  Stepping into that kind of arena is not a very fun place to walk.  When you arrive in your new leadership position, the business model is already on fire.  There are people jumping ship while others are trapped in a room waiting for a miracle to happen.  The leadership style you bring to the table is put on display, immediately.  The test of how you manage a raging fire is the first set of pressures you will face.  The business model is very sick and needs some treatment for repair.  A good portion of your deck hands are part of the reason why you are facing fires on board.  They just do not know it yet.  When they carelessly place open-lid gasoline cans near some empty boxes where a few of the staff go to sneak a quick cigarette, they put the business box at great risk for a fire to occur.  Unfortunately, those contributors do not consider sneaking out to have a quick cigarette anything other than an act of exercising their right to have a smoke.  In three attempts to fix the broken business models I was hired to repair, this is exactly what I commonly find on board those ships.  The "Huns" come from within the fort.

I accept the pressure those fires produce.  I accept the responsibility placed on the job to repair the broken models I was hired to lead and to find a way to put out those fires.  It sounds like a really cool job.  It ain't.  It is always filled with high levels of increasing pressures.  I can comfortably report that the increase in pressure a leader sees in the business model they manage, that increase in pressure will force that leader to change the style of leadership they practice.  Increased pressure will force the leader to change their leadership style.

Most leaders will agree with that set of findings.  Pressure forces changes to occur.  When pressure is applied to a business model it will eventually squirt out somewhere.  Try to look at a business model like you are looking at a large balloon filled with thick paste.  The model can be squeezed here and there and still hold the paste inside.  Different shapes of the round balloon will appear when you set it on the ground and place one hand on the top with a little bit of pressure applied.  The balloon will take the shape of your hand as it impresses itself against the paste-filled balloon.  That shape of your hand will be the mark of your leadership.  Every place you press on the surface of that balloon will react to the pressure you apply.  Your leadership job is to get that balloon to roll in the direction you want it to go without breaking the skin and spilling out the contents of the paste.  Unfortunately if you are managing a broken business model, the road you need to roll the balloon to follow, is not a smoothly paved road and is filled with obstacles of rocks and sharp objects.  Good luck with your job of rolling that paste-filled balloon.  Guess what?  You will soon discover that you will need to carry that balloon instead of rolling it.  Now you need to apply two hands to the side of the balloon skin.  The balloon will take the new shape of your hands from the new pressures you apply as you pick it up off the ground.  New impressions of your management style will begin to appear on skin holding the soft paste inside the model you lift from the ground.  Your style of leadership just changed.

More pressure has a tendency to change the style of leadership an owner uses to manage their models.  Leadership will only become more successful when the leader accepts this truth.  Pressure cannot always be 'fixed' by using the same methods over and over.  The best leaders have learned the art of making good adjustments to their leadership style when the pressure arrives.  Pressure will win if the leader does not adjust.  If you squeeze hard enough, apply enough pressure, that paste will squirt out somewhere.

Ruckus, Random, Resistance...Killers Of Good Business

We Keep Trying To Do The Things That Do Not Work.

Working with business leaders can be trying.  I have seen many leadership styles.  Some styles have helped the business leader win often.  Some styles have contributed to the slow destruction of the business model.  Some styles of leadership need so much repair that it is amazing the business model still exists.  Let's talk about the styles of leadership that will guarantee fair levels of failure.

Sometimes it is good to describe how to win.  It can be helpful to read about how to do certain things that will help deliver winning results.  On the other hand, sometimes it is best to see the kind of leadership that will slowly destroy a good business model.  Describing how particular leadership styles will negatively effect good business results can be useful.  One time I remember watching the Johnny Carson Show a few years ago and a popular young actor came to the show as a special guest.  Johnny Carson and his sidekick Ed McMahon were describing to the audience how this popular actor had announced his intention to get married.  It became the fodder of attention in the discussion.  During the whole interview Johnny Carson kept giving the young actor a lot of advice on how to help protect a good marriage.  During all of the advice Johnny was offering, Ed McMahon was laughing deeply.  Finally Johnny stopped and turned towards his sidekick Ed and asked him why the advice he was offering was so funny.  Ed kept laughing and told the audience that he found it funny to listen to Johnny's advice since Johnny was on his fifth marriage.  Ed described Johnny's advice much like listening to the captain of the Titanic describing how to ram icebergs with a ship.  Everyone got a good laugh.  After the laughter settled down, Johnny spoke up.  Johnny Carson said he was giving the newlywed some advice on how not to do what Johnny did.  Johnny said it was not so funny to describe how to destroy a good marriage.  He continued to describe how some of the best lessons that he could offer to the actor would be the ones that could help the newly wed avoid the most destruction.

Sometimes describing what actions to avoid can be more effective than describing what techniques will work well.  Business leaders can practice some of the things they have heard will work well while at the same time performing other things that are very destructive.  They may avoid performing those destructive patterns if they learned about how those patterns can destroy their success efforts.  What kinds of management patterns help to produce ways to kill good business models?  What kinds of patterns will usually kill good business success?

If you are the type of leader who has the kind of personality that uses a stick to stir up bee hives, I can assure you that eventually your staff support for performing well will 'creatively' disappear.  The kind of leader who finds a stick and hits every little beehive on the business path is the kind of business leader who performs the ruckus style of management.  There are a lot of business managers who operate their leadership style using the ruckus style of management.  They like to create a ruckus in order to take control of the things they want to lead.  They deliver and manage a divide and conquer set of patterns to control.  The production of the business takes a back seat to the production of the divide and conquer methods instilled into the business operations.  The health of the relationships among the staff and customers becomes strained enough to refuse permission for success to grow.  A business can operate for a very long time in this kind of mode.  It will never become very successful.  It will flop along forever and ever doing well short of what it should be doing.  The ruckus developments of control will dominate the energy that could be applied to growing up big.  The model can never become efficient enough to produce the small 2% of difference that makes or breaks the great ones versus the 'also-rans' of the business race.  The ruckus style steals the energy that is needed to make that 2% edge become a reality.  The 2% winning difference will never show up.  The ruckus style eventually kills the good parts of the business model.

I have met a lot of business owners who practice this style of business leadership.  It saddens me.  Not one of them win big and not one of them can sustain a victory for very long.  However, most of them are still operating their struggling business models.  They get by just enough to play in their business models for another year.  Each time some good finds its way to the model, the ruckus style of leadership destroys the opportunity for success to settle in.  It almost appears as though the business leader kills the opportunity for success on purpose.  The ruckus style of leadership is a very destructive cycle to perform.  Hitting beehives with a stick is not a calm method to use for stirring up success.  It brings all of the bees out and they become very agitated.  Customers tend to flee from that kind of sight.  Remember, customer are very fickle.  Their support is very fleeting.  Customers do not appreciate bee stings.  Hanging out near business models that agitate bee hives looks too risky for them to support.  The ruckus style is a killer of good business.  Do not practice it in the marriage of your business model.  Divorce might not be the result, but a rotten marriage will need to be endured.

Leadership, Business And More Leadership

Fix The Leaks

Scroll around the web and search for help on how to improve your business models.  There are countless opportunities floating about the web that provide worthwhile suggestions which offer great examples to apply.  There is no lack in the libraries of helpful tools.  If this is true, then why do so many business models continue to struggle so seriously to succeed?  A business mentor once told me that systems are great, it is when you insert the people that they get all fouled up.  People screw it all up.  Systems of success work just fine.  It is the people that step in that run it off the road.  Business models struggle because there are people in charge of the command post that manages them.  There is not enough of the good leadership required to help those failing business models win.  Leadership and business go hand in hand.  Unfortunately, there is enough leadership only to own and operate one...yet not enough leadership to produce success from managing one.

The gap to success shows up when the leadership has been exhausted.  The storehouse of stock that produces the best leadership finds the end of its rope.  It is discovered that there are limits to how much leadership can be applied to the business model.  Once that storehouse of leadership becomes all used up, the business model begins its slow decent into a failing spin that seems to take forever to complete.  Failing business models can operate for a very long time in this type of mode.  It is painful to watch, painful to manage and painful to approach every single day.  It will wear out the leader and eventually destroy the good they ever dreamed would come out of their business model experience.  They become bitter and discouraged.  Most business owners show signs of this truth in small pockets of the decision-making they do.  Discouraged bitterness finds its way to the surface where the most challenging obstacles tend to appear.  The leader quits leading and begins to start following.  More leadership is needed when the fire gets stronger, not more following.

A business model that is facing some serious obstacles that are distracting the model away from success does not need its leader to stop leading.  It needs its leader to start leading with more success.  If your model is struggling, begin to concede.  Conceded to accept that your leadership needs to improve and increase.  Without this quiet move, your business model is at risk to continue to fail.  If you do not increase your level and volume of leadership, your business project will drain your money, your energy and your spirit.  It may well be doing that very thing right now.  Get it together.  Start to work on improving your leadership skills.  Leadership and business go hand in hand.  They are in many ways the same thing.  If your business model is struggling, it is safe to assume that your business leadership is struggling as well.  When I describe business leadership I am not referring to control.  A lot of business owners are demanding and in control.  That is not exactly the kind of leadership I am describing.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Being in control sucks when your business model does not get it.  Most owners cannot see this effect.  Most businesses are afflicted by it.  It is the result of lost leadership.  The owners are truly lost with their leadership exhibits.  They are displaying the wrong stuff.  Their business results are revealing it.  Blinks are happening.

Do You Follow The Business Rules?

I had a great discussion with one of the our employees the other day.  She is one of the better employees that knows how to produce good results.  She works hard most of the time.  On the downside level of her performance when she has a personal crisis at home, she falls off at work.  The rules that support business production tend to fly out of the window when she is in crisis mode.  She is better off going home.  She becomes lost for the day.  Her mind will flop completely out of gear and her work production forgets the rules of the road.  I do not like to compensate her for floating around in a daze, which she will do without concern.  Go home.  There are business rules to production.  That is why we employ people.  Owners need those production rules met every single day.  Unfortunately, business owners must pick their battles carefully.  Some employees do not produce well every single day.  They violate the business rules of production.

The discussion she and I had came on a different day.  It came on a day after she had spent the day walking around in a daze.  When she was walking around in a daze, no discussion about returning back to productive work would have served a good purpose.  Like I said, pick your battles carefully.  It is one of the invisible rules to business.  I waited until she had pushed through whatever was weighing her down before I opened the door to some lessons about work and the rules of the business road.  To my surprise, she was very receptive to listen.  It turned out to be a good discussion.  She actually asked some questions about the lessons and offered some insight as to why she gets so overwhelmed with personal stuff.  It was not a threatening exchange on either part.  Good timing is another business rule to follow.

I like to talk about the subject of fears when an employee goes south with regard to respect for the rules of the business road.  Personal issues are a very serious part of life.  This is more true today than ever.  We live in a complicated, carelessly managed, and falsely empowered day and age.  Your employees are buried deep in debt and worried about how life is headed.  They likely do not manage their personal lives well with regard to appropriately governed high standards.  Most of your employees live a life that has some terrible bumps and bruises occurring.  With so many life distractions flashing around in society, working to protect high standards of living is nearly an impossibility.  Your employees are compromising their high standards more now than ever.  The junk happening to them in their personal lives is growing.  Some of that junk is packed to and from the places where they work.  That junk they are packing is a by-product of our 21st century lifestyles.  It gets stirred into the time they spend doing the business rules at your place of business.  It lives with them at work.  Some of their focus on the rules of business production take a back seat to the emotions they carry caused by the mismanagement efforts that come from their home life.  Good employees can be packing some very bad personal loads.  It can show up at work...and does.

The home life mismanagement style of your employees is not your business.  It only becomes your business when the fringes of their actions interfere with the production rules of your work plans.  When they react to their mismanagement efforts of home life issues by ignoring the rules of your business production process, you must step in.  Their personal life is not your issue, however.  That is none of your business.  Your business is your business.  There is a definite difference.  Know where those lines are and stick strictly to them.  It is a very fine line and your business rules will determine where that line is drawn.  Open your policy book, open the unwritten rules about of how to operate a small business properly and you will not find any language that gives you the permission to interfere with the personal home life of your employees, unless the law permits it.  None.  Do not go there.  It ain't your business and you should never go there.  Avoid it.  Instead, find a different method to teach them about the rules of business production.  Do not try to do the three M's.  Make your mate move.  I love that one.  How many people have you met that tries hard to change the behavior patterns of the other mate?  It does not work but I see so many people try to make their mate move.  I call it the three M's.  I have watched many people fail to win that game.

We want our mate to be what we want our mate to be.  We try to manage our mates.  We insert the three M's techniques and watch our relationships suffer and blame the other mate for not getting it.  Hello, stupid!  Your mate is who they are.  Period.  Accept it or find a new one.  However, sooner or later you will need to get along with one of them.  I found that if I was having trouble finding a great mate, maybe my next date should be a mirror.  Fortunately, I did not need to use a big mirror for too long.  A great mate came along.  I do not try nor want to change her.  I go to work every single day with harmony at home.  It makes a huge difference in the respect I offer to the rules of my business production.  If you are an owner, get good at managing your home life.  It is one of the best business rules you can follow.  I could write seminars on this subject for hours upon end.  A home mess is a destructive ill that can immobilize success opportunities.   I have watched this type of destruction kill everything a good business deserves.  Make this business rule rise to the top.  Get it together at home.  It is the heart of your business rules.  Get it together at home.

Who Makes More Money, Leaders Or Followers?

Do Not Believe This Lie!

I am a few months away from being in business for forty years.  June of 2012 will be forty years for me.  It seems almost impossible to be true.  I have made a lot of mistakes in those forty years of operations.  I wonder how large the list of mistakes is?  There likely are not enough trees in my neighborhood to produce the paper enough to hold that list.  There are 210 trees alone on my lot.  That is not enough trees.  Wow, forty years is almost done.  In that forty years, I bet I cannot count on one hand the times I met a follower who made more money than the leader.  Maybe twice, maybe three times.

Leaders make more money.  That is the way money works.  Money has some laws that just do not find many ways to get broken.  Money laws are money laws.  They work like gravity.  We do not always think about how gravity works.  We just trust that it will hold us to the ground while we walk.  In fact, scientists really do not know how gravity works, specifically.  We can only prove that the greater the mass the stronger the pull.  Money is a lot the same.  The greater the leader the stronger the dough.

Money rarely violates some of its pure laws.  Most people walk this world and do not pay attention to how money works.  If you walked up to a stranger and asked them who makes more money, not one would say, "A leader makes more money."  Even though we like to be correct when we speak, even though we want to have the right answer, even though the truth is the truth, most would not be able to get the answer to this question right.  Leaders make more money.

I have not met many people who do not want to make more money.  In fact, most wished they were getting paid more for what they are doing.  The problem might be in the level of leadership they are producing.  If the level of leadership is not very high, neither is their income.  It is one of the laws of money.  Just because nobody ever told them how it works does not mean they get to be immune from those laws.  With or without that knowledge the laws of money will remain in place.  Leaders always make more money.  It is one of the laws of money.

Go visit a place of business and find out who leads the way of that business.  Then check out who helps the leader make that business happen by following what they are hired to do, the follower.  After comparing the two, measure who makes more money between the two workers...the leader or the follower.  It will always be the leader.

So why don't people who want to make more money learn how to become a better leader?  Because they want their cake and eat it too.  The sour part of that trip is that money does not care what they want, it only follows the laws it makes.  Millions of workers do not get this truth down very well.  They spend their whole life grinding away at a truth they just cannot seem to accept.  The result remains...they will not make more money....ever.  Followers are in abundance.  They will even try to get organized to rally together to demand more money.  The only ones who win that game are the leaders of the union, or the leaders of the organized group.  Same law, same result.  Followers never seem to get it.  They want results that they do not want to earn.  We all know that leadership comes with a price.  Followers do not want to pay that price.  Hence, lower income.

If you are a follower and you do not like what you are earning, start working to improve your leadership skills.  Increasing your income will not happen if you remain a follower.  Leaders make more money.  Get familiar with this simple law of money and start working to honor it instead of ignoring it.  It is not a law that will go away some day.  It will remain long after you are gone.  It is a law of money that will not 'skip over' you and honor some form of violation to give you more than your leadership is worth.  You ain't getting paid more for the level of leadership you produce.  If you want to earn more money doing what you are doing, you will need to learn how to improve the production of your leadership.  Otherwise, give it up, it ain't going to happen.